Guild Wars 2

AR took garrison on reset night. I don’t remember how long they held it… it was after we had dispersed a bit thinking the reset rush was quelled. This week we will be a bit more diligent later into the night.

And I agree, more score updates here next week! I’ve been stuck working at my office a lot lately instead of from home. I can’t log in and check stuff hardly ever these days so you guys are my lifeline!

Dayra.7405:

I don’t think it is a linear function.

I don’t either, that’s what I’m hoping to find in an answer somewhere here… someone smarter than me that maybe knows the math and can tell me “Hey, when you reach that base level, go smack server #2 more than #1 because pound for pound that lead is going to be worth more.”

Ok, so this is good. This is getting closer to an answer. Do the best you, can, gain the most points possible, take those as givens.

If going into a match a server knew that they had to beat server 1 by x and server 2 by y just to break even, that gives them their starting point. Now the server has to establish what its priorities are beyond that initial goal.

If the goal is 50,000 over #1 and 45,000 over #2 to break even, once those are realized, what nets more gain, going for:

100,000 over #1 and 50,000 over #2
or
75,000 over #1 and 75,000 over #2

Or is there no difference, meaning that the rate of point gain is a static 1 to 1 type relationship where each x number of points over a predicted outcome directly equals 1 rating point gain regardless of which opponent it came from?

So how do we know what the predicted score of our server vs our two opponents would be? And does marginally beating both predictions equal a larger shift than blowing one out of the water and possibly not beating the other? There has to be a way to know what the watermarks are going into the match and how beating each watermark relates to point gain…

I understand that it calculates a match as each server fighting 2 separate matches against the opposing servers, but the math behind it is a bit over my head so I can’t run through this myself and figure out why we are seeing the outcomes we see and how to best play the system.

I do know that they are changing it, and I’m looking forward to that. But I’d like to understand how it’s working now because some of the results I see don’t add up common sense-wise.

For example:

10. Sea of Sorrows 251 392 1683 +22.650
11. Stormbluff Isle 141 180 1586 -24.035
12. Crystal Desert 157 175 1575 + 1.810

13. Ehmry Bay 262 284 1482 + 7.753
14. Borlis Pass 161 446 1365 -12.196
15. Anvil Rock 173 038 1357 + 4.592

In the first set, SoS is about 100 rating points ahead of SBI and CD, they are beating 2nd place by 110k and 3rd by ~90k.

In the 2nd set, EBay is about 120 rating points ahead of BP and AR and is beating 2nd by 100k and 3rd by 90k.

Overall, the differences in score and ratings aren’t that drastically different, they are in the same ballpark. Yet SoS is netting 22 points for their victory while EBay is only gaining 7. SoS’s victory margin isn’t 3 times better than EBays is, nor are their competition 3 times tougher based on ratings.

So where is the discrepancy? Is the 20 extra rank points EBay has on it’s competitors the big factor? Or is it the extra 10k lead SoS has on it’s #2 competitor that amplifies the gain?

Essentially, what I want to know is in it’s current form, what does glicko give points for? How do we play this system? If it’s going to be another month before it’s replaced, I don’t want to just wait around for that to happen to see a new matchup pairing… I want to try to change it now. So what do we have to do? Does standing on the 2nd place server and creating an astronomical point difference net more points than beating both by about an equal amount? Short of putting up 400k and sending both servers home with their underwear pulled up over their heads, what outcome or set of outcomes does the lead server the most good?

ekleenex.1654:

Why is everyone giving [BURN] a hard time? We don’t want to demoralize them, we want to encourage them, they will evolve, and who knows… This tier might get competitive… … …
…
…

Once glicko is fixed and were gone. ;D

Maybe I’m just not as 1337 as everyone else but I like BURN. We run into them every so often and they do some good things. I’d way rather fight them than other groups we see, it’s more fun.

Separate note, last night was fun. We rolled around in BP BL for a while, ran into AR trying to take SW tower and did a couple circles through the battle to fight with both of them. Then we tried to give AR a tower but they wouldn’t go through the opening in the wall, so we had to do it ourselves in the end.

After that it was on to AR BL, but I went to bed so I dunno what they did without me.

Thanks for being good hosts to pk’s drunk night guys. Hopefully we didn’t break any of your mom’s ornaments on the way out.

Killsmith.8169:

Skills use the formula (Weapon Strength * Power * Skill Coefficient)/Armor. The skill coefficient is where value of power comes into play.

That basically answers my question. It is, then, possible that a lightly armored class would derive more benefit from a statistic than a heavily armored class, thus creating a trade-off for survivability.

Do we know what the skill coefficients are? And these are then what are modified by traits and other such factors?

I had never really paid attention to this until last night when I noticed that heavy medium and light armor of the same level/rarity have exactly the same stats except for armor value.

I don’t think I’ve seen this in a game before… generally there are some kinds of statistical trade-offs for having light armor vs heavy armor because you are spending some of the armors value into added survivability. In GW2 that doesn’t appear to be the case on the surface though. So I am wondering, does a heavy armor class with 2000 power get the same benefit from that statistic as a light armor class with the same 2000 power, or are the calculations as to how that power modifies their attacks different?

Guardians are just fine. They are probably the best balanced class in the game.

Guys, seriously, just leave the transfers alone. It does make sense if it makes them enjoy WvW more and no amount of complaining from anyone changes that. If they had underdog mentality and left EBay for BP or AR, great for them. If they left AR for BP and now they feel like they can finally get the support they craved to attack the top dog, good for them too. If they left either to join EBay because of whatever reason, we will welcome them in with open arms.

If they were passionate WvW players, it’ll be a great addition to any server they join. If they were casuals looking for more fun then there’s a good chance they will be the first ones out the door when we are in BP’s shoes in a face off against SoS in T4. Either way, only time will tell what impact, if any, a small scale transfer has on anyone. Yelling about it in this matchup thread as if any of us had any insight into anyone else’s mind and game experience is futile.

Pestilence.3184:

At the time KREW were the super power on BP along with sbzy but the 2 guilds HATED one another and tore the first alliance to pieces. From there on BP has been re building re structuring the way our wvw is run.

Once upon a time EBay was the same. We had more fights in map chat with each other than with the enemy most nights and good luck seeing some of our guilds coordinate to even take a supply camp. We feel you, we went through “the exodus” to mags and others possibly at the same time as you.

RyuDragnier.9476:

To the players who left AR…why did you leave for another server IN THE SAME TIER!? Do you think it’ll magically change how you feel about WvW in this tier? Do you think it’ll magically make you have a good time?

2 posts up from yours, you don’t think it makes at least some sense?

Ya, it took us rising to mid T4, falling and a mass exodus of some of our bigger WvW guilds to finally start working out our dysfunctional states and coming together as a real team. The evolution can take time. We are far stronger today than we ever were on our first rise though.

You guys on BP dont know just how much Ehmry sees of itself when it fights you. You honestly don’t have much less in terms of numbers than we did in a previous shot up the chart. And with about what you have we overcame servers with similar presence than what you see in EBay on the way. It’s why you see so much backlash when people play the ‘you only win with numbers’ card. We have been sitting in your exact position, and we know exactly what you could be capable of with a bit more organization and commitment to observation.

I do hope you get there.

As a side comment to the people wondering why AR would choose EBay as a transfer destination. If someone isn’t getting what they want out of WvW, and they see what they want in a server they are facing, to me that makes more sense than transferring to a server you know little about. You might end up in a worse situation than you are in now… And it makes more sense that way too than transferring specifically to even out a matchup. Transfers are expensive, so you have to think about what you want to do long term too. That’s not a knock against any server here… Just thinking from the other side of the coin.

Straegen.2938:

Are people enjoying this matchup?

My guild has mostly left GW2 for other games and those that remain don’t play nearly as much. I suppose it is inevitable for us to move on, but the decline really hit with this matchup. Course most of our playing has been on non-tier dominant servers constantly fighting to stay on the map which tends to be demoralizing over time.

Not really… it got a bit old a month ago. Happily, ANet has confirmed changes in the works to the glicko scoring system to hit live servers at some point this month that will promote more volatility. Then we’ll all get some fresh matchups going.

nothing.7941:

I love how ebay guys recommend themselves or AR in tier 5, but not BP. I wonder why?

If you are implying that we would be afraid to fight BP with an extra presence in the NA primetime, that had nothing to do with my recommendations. They had some specific requirements and after fighting BP for about 9 weeks now I don’t feel they fit what this guild is looking for. If they ultimately do move there and are happy with the decision, then I am happy for them. I personally haven’t been left with a good impression from what I have seen from BP thus far though, and wouldn’t steer someone there.

If I were to make an honest and unbiased recommendation excluding my own server I would still put Devona’s Rest on the top of the list. They are a really great community, we thoroughly enjoyed fighting them, and many on my server feel that with just a little bit more manpower they could be a permanent and competitive fixture in this tier. They were always outmanned, but never outclassed.

I will say that I would rather fight 20v20v20 or 30v30v30 than 60v60 or 40v40 straight up. Having the 3rd dimension to the fight changes everything, and the times when I’ve seen things on the scale of 60v60v60 inside the lord room of SM have been the times when you can run through the entire room mashing buttons without ever using a skill or being hit due to lag on the server end. I don’t think I want those fights on a regular basis… I’d rather have what I have in T5 and T4.

CHIPS.6018

In lower tiers the battles are always 10vs10 or 20vs20. Yes those are fun too but you guys are missing a whole variety of large scale battles. I cannot prove to you that 60vs60 battles are fun. You have to test that out for yourself.

60v60 is extremely uncommon in T5, I’ve probably seen it a handful of times. 40v40 happens on a nightly basis though, and I can’t say that adding 20 per side changes the dynamic.

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

Roamers contribute to WvW just fine. They are often the ones feeding commanders scouting reports, denying supply at crucial times while the larger groups hammer it out in other places.

He didn’t say that roamers don’t contribute, he said:

ekleenex.1654:

But I’m sure every server will thank their solo roamers for the great WvWvW contributions. I love small man groups, and running in them.

His point is that this isn’t sPvP, it’s WvW. It’s designed for large encounters. Small groups and solo roamers serve a valuable purpose, but boasting about a 1337 1v1 build downing a support build that is structured to fight large groups, feed off of allies skills and counter multiple enemies is not something that anyone cares about here. It’s comparing apples to oranges, they are two different things and thus not directly related. It doesn’t prove one player’s skill over another, it only proves one person is building to fight single targets while the other is building to be a factor of amplification in a larger machine.

Because working your own way up the ladder is much more satisfying. Witnessing my guild and my servers evolution from a low end T7 server up to T4, falling after an exodus and then working our way back up ourselves by honing our tactics and improving our server wide cohesion was a thing of beauty.

Glicko can only hold us in T5 for so long. And when we get to T4 we don’t plan on plateauing. Maybe we won’t ever skyrocket to T1, but I see no reason why T3 can’t be in the cards eventually. And when we get there it will be on our own blood and sweat, not riding on someone else coattails. I’ll take that sense of accomplishment over a transfer any day.

Evilzara.6378:

The only reason Ehmry didn’t do well in tier 4 before was because of Yaks/Maguuma. Now that both of them are in tier 3, I think Ehmry can easily win tier 4.

I don’t know about easily, but with CD claiming a reduced SEA presence I’d say we have a decent shot.

Feel bad for AR and BP losing fair weather players though due to this locked matchup. I know they don’t represent your core, but the pug numbers do help… We’ve experienced the same thing in the past, you recover but it still sucks.

On the matchup news front, there has been a dev response to that cry for help in T1 EU claiming that they are testing a change to the scoring system and that we will see it in live likely within the month. The goal is to provide greater volatility to the scoring and hopefully fix stuck matches like ours (and T6’s… I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but their scoring evolution is going in roughly the same arc as T5 did when we fist got there, they stand to get stuck right where they are fairly easily barring a blowout in both T5 and T6 on the same week resulting in a move)

Hopefully everyone can just hang on until this happens and then we can have some fresh matchups!

Manekk.6981:

Khayoss.2019:

Crossbows and greataxes are a great idea.

I think it would also be cool to see a slingshot and a 1 handed hammer.

There are slingshots already and maces are hammers no?

or are you thinking slingshot like this one?

I was thinking slingshots as pictured. Mace I guess is close, but that does remind me that the morning star ball and chain type mace would be rad too.

Devourers are good simply because they have ranged attacks. All other pets are prone to miss many of their attacks because they can’t move and cast at the same time, and people can just outmaneuver them.

Jaguar is good because they don’t see it coming though. Wolf fear is a great 2nd interrupt when downed, and bears are good because they survive aoes longer than other pets.

I use the murellow because the F2 creates a poison field I can use, while being survivable enough to place it inside a zerg before dying.

Those would be my suggestions until pet AI gets better.

This is a major “need” in this game, and especially in WvW. I think its crazy that our squad system in GW2 of 2013 is more basic than the raid system in EQ back in 2000ish.

We need to be able to see the party makeups of those in our squads. Commanders should really have a lot of control over the squad, including possibly the ability to form and re-assign groups, and the ability to invite to squad, and accept/reject squad invite requests. Squads should really be “super parties”.

There are 3 servers id recommend, Ehmry Bay, Devonas Rest or Anvil Rock. DR is one of the most tactically sound servers we have faced in lower tiers. I loved fighting them because no matter what numbers they fielded they always managed to put up a fight. Their players had skill in the open field, and their community seemed strong from an outsiders perspective. Much of the same can be said for AR, except skewed more towards open field fighting moreso than WvW siege/defense tactics – a product of their sPvP roots.

Ehmry has 3 large WvW guilds of your size already that work very well together, as well as many smaller but VERY dedicated guilds. We are a stable community that for the most part have all been together since the beginning. We have only had one major guild transfer to us – SEKZ – who gelled very well with our group and made a huge impact on how we play.

If you consider Ehmry I suggest you visit our forums at ehmry.com, talk to us on TS, and especially talk to SEKZ about their experience coming over as they will have some insight into your situation moreso than others would.

Being from Ehmry Bay myself, obviously I’m biased on who I hope you choose, but I feel that we have a very dedicated and professional core WvW community, and that you could probably make a big impact on our server as a whole, while learning a lot yourselves.

Good luck wherever you land. See you on the battlefield.

Rangers can have quite a few “pets” out at once if you have the right setup.
Normal pet
If normal pet is Hyena it can bring a friend
Pirate runes (and others) can summon pet bird that sticks around for quite a while
Hounds of Balthazar brings 2 more pets
Bird attack from horn can look like a pet

Other rune combos can have summons coming off of them too…

If you’re fighting a ranger geared like that it can look like he’s bringing an army…

There are many people that need help with this ratings system. The NA T5 matchup is kind of stuck too. EBay dropped down to T5 9 weeks ago. On the week we went down many guilds took a week off of WvW to do some other things. The upstart Borliss Pass server played well above expectations and handed us a loss in the tier and crippled our ratings. Since then we have won every matchup – this week by 100k over both servers – but the damage done by that single loss is almost insurmountable.

Because of the ratings gap in T4 with SoS coming from a higher tier, SBI and CD both extend their lead on us each week while losing their matchups, making our gains to move back to the tier negligible.

This isn’t fun for anyone at this point as BP and AR in our tier really have no say in what happens – we can basically decide for them which one we want to place 2nd or 3rd – while beating them by large margins does very little for us either. At the current pace, winning by 100k+ each week we will still be facing the exact same matchup for a minimum of another 5 weeks. No one in our tier wants that, we all are dying for a change of pace, tactics and scenery.

Can we please just accept that for WvW to be fun, the ratings need more volatility and room to move? The occasional blowout in either direction is fine, no one is going to quit because they moved up and couldn’t handle what came at them… but no one should be forced to roflstomp the same servers week in and out, or be booted in the head week in and week out just to maybe one day 3-4 months from now finally be able to move in one direction or the other. That’s just lame.

Crossbows and greataxes are a great idea.

I think it would also be cool to see a slingshot and a 1 handed hammer.

Pet skills in general need 0.5 second or less cast time to be useful in any form of PvP because of how quickly players can move out of the way, OR pets must be able to keep moving while they cast and execute their maneuvers because rooting them in place before their attacks makes them useless against anyone who knows how to use a keyboard.

Pets also need a larger range on their melee and ranged attacks to compensate for their lack of smarts in following people as they move. That applies to everything they do IMO.

I see the same behavior… F2 doesn’t always activate abilities on several pets. Murellow seems to fire every time but Polar Bear isn’t as consistent. Tried Moa after seeing this post and got the same thing. Even on passive sometimes the skill misfires completely.

I agree wholeheartedly with a previous poster that F2’s should start instantly and override any and all other actions that they may be attempting.

Also, the cast times are still WAAAAAY to long for WvW. At 1.5 seconds, no player should ever be hit by an offensive pet skill unless they are not watching their screen. Cast time has to be something in the order of 0.5 seconds or less, or the pet has to be able to keep moving while casting otherwise these skills are just never going to work. There really isn’t another solution.

I’m not sure that helps him in this specific situation…? The complaint is with the animation moving him into a position that causes other attacks to miss. Whether you press the button yourself or the AA does it for you, the animation would still be the same, no?

I haven’t experienced this because I haven’t done much sword fighting and I don’t play an Asura, but it seems like a different issue.

Screw bees. Monkeys FTW!!! My new #1 request to ANet. I will deal with pets being 1 step short of completely useless in WvW if it can be a monkey.

Deal?

I find it really irritating that I have to log into this website every time I visit the forums. Other forums and membership websites I belong to keep me logged in over the course of days and weeks, while this one logs me out simply by closing my browser or navigating to a new website.

I’m using IE10 on Windows 8, but have the same results with Chrome. Although with Chrome, I usually show as logged in when I land on the main guildwars2.com home page, but then show as logged out as soon as I enter the forums.

Please fix?

Dahkeus.8243:

That’s all well and good…until your spirit dies.

Look, there are simply to many ‘ifs’ for a ranger to really work well as a damage dealer in the type of build you’re outlining

- IF you can survive and dodge without getting stuck in 1h sword animation
– IF your squishy glass cannon pet that can’t dodge and doesn’t know to go around red circles when called back survives the full boss encounter
– IF the boss doesn’t touch your spirit until you can recast it
– IF you and your group stay in range of your spirit for the entire boss fight

Meanwhile, a warrior/thief/etc. can just focus on dpsing and dodging when necessary. Many classes like thief and mesmer have abilities on their weapons that allow them to evade damage while boosting their dps (Flanking Strike and Blurred Frenzy) whereas the ranger evade attack is lower dps and condition based.

This, and more in WvW encounters. Your pet in the OP is doing 35% of your damage… that pet would barely even make it to it’s target in a group encounter. Your spirit would die the second it saw light of day too…

The point of this post is that Rangers can do amazing damage under ideal circumstances against stationary targets at extremely short range. That doesn’t translate into much real world functionality. Honestly, as long as 35-40% of our damage comes from something we can’t control we will never be on par with other classes.

I just made an entirely new build to try out signets in WvW. I went and spent 2k badges on Carrion gear, added Earth runes I think they are(?) that give you protection and toughness, swapped from bows to Axe/Dagger + Sword/Horn and traited 30/0/30/0/10. Took all signet traits in Marksman, Renewal Offhand Training and Barkskin in WS and I can’t remember what in BM.

I have to get use to the weapon set, and I’m sure that my gear isn’t the best it could be… but I didn’t want to drop more than 30 gold on an experiment. Overall I’m pretty happy with what the signets do for you. With the shorter cooldowns I feel like I am cycling through Stone/Hunt/Wild effects multiple times in each encounter… which means I am doing a lot less damage but also surviving a lot longer I guess since most fights were over a lot quicker in either direction before.

I also like that I can run inside a castle, swap my Marksman traits to steady focus / piercing arrows / eagle eye, pull out the bows and start defending from the walls without losing too much. I really miss the 50%+ crit chance, I might try swapping to different jewelry to try to up it a bit. I get up near 30% with fury, but it’s just not what I’m use to.

Will give this a week or two and see how it feels, may go back to zerker backline stuff in the end, but it’s fun so far and I approve the signet portion of this patch for sure!

Pet AI improvements I’m not really seeing though… my pet still runs off all the time, takes forever to catch up to me when I jump off of something and gets in front of me when we are traveling. It’s nice that he doesn’t aggro stuff anymore, but I have a feeling that is going to change back because you can twist that to your advantage so easily that it just feels wrong.

Technical limitations don’t mean that it “can’t” be done, it just means that there’s stuff to work around. We run into technical limitations at my software company all the time, they make brains hurt.

If it’s a resources thing, put it in perspective by thinking about the skill lag in a 50v50v50 battle in the lords room at SM. Those 150 people firing off AoE’s hitting 5 players each are taxing the servers so badly that you, the invader, can walk all the way through the lords room pounding on ‘0’ and never get your elite skill to fire. Often you walk out the other side having taken little to no damage either because you either never rendered at any of those points or some other problem prevented you from ever being included in damage calculations. 20 arrow carts and balistas spamming their multi target hits at the same time is also probably a large culprit.

Now take each of those 150 people hitting up to 5 targets and ask the server to calculate 45 more targets for every skill that does register. In this scenario, want to defend SM? Queue up EBG, have everyone sit in the middle of SM and auto cast AoE’s and go AFK. Guaranteed, no one could ever take it because no attacker’s skills would ever fire.

Probably not as simple as upgrading the server to a faster processor I am guessing or we’d be done by now. Most likely there’s load balancing issues that have to be worked out? I dunno… not my infrastructure, but I can see why it’s not a flick of a switch type fix.

Mastermavrick.2439:

To the THREE rangers i just fought @Golta Kudos was fun

If the ranger that downed you in the end /bowed after then that was me. I know I had a good fight with a ranger that had just downed a guildmate of mine at Golanta a couple hours ago.

I’m running a brand new build, using an axe and a dagger both for the first time since I unlocked the skills back in September. I can use all the practice I can get, and honestly I only finished the job because I had guard support in the camp. You are much better than me in this new getup.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I’m just here, sleeping at Hills. I’m that bored since I’m the one watching the keep for the server. I mean come on…2 hours without anything interesting.

I’ll come join you as soon as I can convince myself to get out of bed…

Even after the nerf, confusion from glamour traited mesmers is still top dog for condition damage… I dont feel bad for mesmers at all, they don’t have to respec they just have to get use to being mortal like the rest of us.

monepipi.5160:

LB’s attack speed cannot be fast, at least not as fast as SB’s. You’re trading speed for range. The 2 bows fill different roles, you cannot buy a pickup and complain that it is not as fast as a ferrari. Have you guys actually been in WvW? That would break it, everyone will be running rangers in WvW, where there is already a huge presence of our class.

Except that the two bows have the same range with the longbow auto attack being less effective as the target gets closer… so you are trading speed for what, exactly? The opportunity to suck more? Sounds good.

If LB was 1500 inherently to the SB’s 1200 you’d have a point.

Daemon.4295:

slingblade.1437:

Arpheus.6918:

There is more:
Signet of Stone offers my pet and me 180 toughness. I think before todays patch the ranger got a really small amount of toughness.

Is this confirmed?

I thought it would be 70 for the player (35 X 2) and 240 for the pet (120 X 2). That’s based on wiki numbers.

The wiki says 180, but I haven’t opened the game yet. Did it used to be 90? I thought it was less but I could easily be mistaken.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Stone

“Notes
Gives both the player and pet 180 toughness at level 80.”

I just checked in game by adding/removing SoS skill, it’s 180 for sure.

Chopps.5047

Bears and devourers are not the only viable pets in a zerg. Thankfully the toughness was left alone so aggro tables don’t kick up on pets in pve.

If you say so. Mine die before even reaching their targets or getting their F2’s off far, far more often than not. If you can keep yours alive then power to you. I’ll be sticking with reliability over usefulness or personal preference though because no matter what the damage and utilities are, a pet who is still alive is always more useful than a dead pet.

Patch notes made me realize why Drake was so ineffective… 2.7 second cast time?? I knew it was long, but in nearly 3 seconds even a crippled player could move from one side of the battlefield to the other.

I’m extremely happy with signet changes and very interested in pet AI/pathing changes.

I’m underwhelmed by the armor and hp buffs. The biggest buff came to the only pet that didn’t need it bear pets and armored fish. Devourers had a nice buff, might make them a bit more survivable. In any event, I think the only pets that are viable in WvW group conflicts are devourers and bears, this patch pretty much seals the deal for me because they are the only ones that got a good boost.

I’m skeptical about the reduction in F2 times too… will have to see how it works. If the range of the abilities is also increased then it might be a great change, but 1.5 seconds is still a hell of a long time for a moving target to get out of the way of an AI controlled animal that stops moving in order to cast. I guess 25-33% is a ‘drastic’ reduction, just not as drastic as I had hoped. In WvW I was picturing sub 1 second times in order to make them connect with moving players.

Snafu.7412:

Avenge.1478:

World vs. World

•The “under attack” notice at objectives now displays 30 seconds after it is first attacked. Does not affect waypoint usage.

This is huge.

If I am reading that right, waypoints are now available 100% of the time? No more contested keeps? Or it just doesn’t affect waypoint usage for the first 30 seconds while it is not displaying?

Either way, it just got a hell of a lot easier to defend.

If Waypoints are not available after that 30 seconds, it also makes players contesting keeps actually stick around to contest them, not just run past and fire an arrow… I very much like that.

WvW is all I really play, so in that context I have 3 main setups I swap between.

Devourer/Devourer. Lower damage than other pets, but at least its ranged and hits more consistently because people don’t generally target it. They melt the second anything more than 4 enemies are involved though.

Wolf/Dog – love the F2s and the kd effects, but the slow cast and their inability to hit moving targets consistently makes this the pet combo I “want” to use moreso than one I actually can use.

Bear/Bear – When running full glass zerker I essentially have 2 methods of survival, signet of stone and protect me. With bears that’s 12 seconds of invulnerability (conditions still apply) at my disposal to use in place of toughness and vitality. Only really woks with bears though because everything else melts too fast. Unfortunately a pair of bears on passive is about the most useful thing I can do with 40% of my class, which is sad.

I will say for WvW, chill is my favorite skill. Any pet that can chill is on my short list and one day when pets actually work against human players that will be the deciding factor on most pet choices.

pk is primarily a WvW guild, but we have nearly all guild missions unlocked and run multiple times per week, dungeon and fractal parties forming all day every day, and a steady stream of info about world bosses and meta events flowing through guild chat. So even if WvW isn’t your primary focus you won’t be out of place.

We do require TS for WvW coordination and website registration for guild event planning. Also 100% rep in WvW. If you have interest in WvW, check us out even if you decide to join a more PvE focused guild.

http://playerkillerz.enjin.com/

I don’t really care what they do in the end as long as they do something. I want direct control over my pets movement/placement/pathing and abilities plus pets that are capable of damaging people on walls and from walls, or the ability to make a build that stows the pet and acts alone, or the pet to be revamped to be more passive in nature, or anything else that gives me full control over my damage output.

If it makes the ranger an uber micro class, that is tough for new players to master, so be it. At least there would be an incentive to master it.

As is now, the pet is fine in most PvE and is stellar in sPvP. It a detriment, a handicap to our ability to function, in anything more than a very small encounter in WvW, and WvW is not about small encounters now is it.

Pedra.4381:

Daecollo.9578:

It was advertised as a pet class.

It was also advertised that classes were balanced.

And a master of ranged combat, which in practice is not totally compatible with pets unless those pets also attack from long distance or have other uses beyond running into the line of fire and dying, or standing helplessly beside you on a wall.

Love this idea, make pets more like the guardians F1-3 abilities. Fixes all my complaints in WvW. I wouldn’t even mind if we had to spend trait points to get access to certain pets if it was like that.

In WvW it hasn’t changed my play at all. I miss the burst a bit, but other than that I just sucked it up and kept playing. It still helps raising downed allies and quick building siege, which was what I used it for 50% of the time to begin with.

Pets AI fixes will help in PvE and sPvP. Until we are either given far more control over every action our pet takes, and given a way to slide the damage scale away from the 60:40 split we currently have to take for having a pet, they will always be a detriment to WvW.